Rain in the Desert
by Isola
Summary: It rains the night she first comes to his door. WS hints of GS.


**Disclaimer:** I own absolutely nothing here - that honour goes CBS and various affiliates and other dodgy critters (Les Moonves, anyone?), so no lawsuits, please. Only thing to my name arecredit card bills stacked higher than the bloody Mount Everest.

**Rating:** I'm not familiar with the American ratings system, so I'm giving this an 'R' to be on the safe side. This is a wee bit dark and there is some rude language, so it's probably appropriate anyway.

**Spoilers:** No real concrete ones, as far as I can tell, but just in case, everything is game.

**Author's note:** I am normally a rabid Geek Love (Sara/Grissom) _reader_ (alas, too lazy to actually _write _something myself), but while wiling away an unproductive day at work I started to write this. It is a one-shot Sara/Warrick with vague hints of Sara/Grissom. And I should probably also point out that English is not my first language, and since I don't have a beta any spelling and grammatical errors are totally the fault of my old English teacher....

Should you like this please review – though be aware that flames might make me cry like a baby.

**Rain in the Desert**

It rains the night she first comes to his door. He opens it with mussed hair and green eyes scrunched tight against the porch light; she stands pale and mute right outside the circle of illumination, her own eyes too big for her face, her mouth made small and pronounced by secret emotions held tightly in check.

He has no time to register and express feelings of surprise – she simply walks past him into his house and heads straight for the kitchen, even though he knows for a fact that she's never set a foot inside his home. By the time he has caught up with her she is sitting by his table, waiting with dark hair obscuring her face as she is leaning slightly forward on her elbows. Her eyes might be large in her narrow face, but they are also black and void of anything tangible. The second he sits down opposite her, still shaking sleep out of his head, she gets out of her chair and walks round the table to him. She stops right before him, standing close enough to make him vaguely uncomfortable, and while she is looking down into his face she does not meet his eyes.

She draws a finger along his jaw and then down his throat; when finding his pulse she rests her finger lightly upon it. She closes her eyes and moves her lips, but he cannot make any sense of what she might mutely be saying, if it even means anything at all. He raises his hand to move hers of his neck, but without ever opening her eyes she catches his hand with her free one, and then refuses to let it go.

She opens her eyes again, and gives the smallest little sigh. Still touching his heartbeats she smiles. He does not like that smile. She talks, her voice rusty and thick.

"Would you take me to bed?"

He knows he should not; knows that it won't ever be a good idea or have a bearable ending. Yet he stands and with his hand to her lower back guides her toward his bedroom. She walks before him with her neck bowed.

Afterwards she leaves to get back to work and he lies with his eyes wide open, looking at shadows playing on the wall opposite the bed. He does not follow her to the door, and she does not seem to expect him to as she quietly gets dressed and then leaves his bedroom and his house. He feels resignation and relief, and cannot sleep for the rest of the night.

* * *

After that first time she knocks on his door at random intervals – when he has a night off and when she has faced horrors at work that she cannot shake or forget. He receives her with feelings that are torn within him, but are always unable to reject her. He chooses not to dwell on his reasons for this. While they communicate with relative ease at work they hardly speak within the confines of his bedroom - there he concentrates on her body and his, and she on reaching a void within her that might grant her peace for a couple of precious minutes. Afterwards she always returns back to the lab, back to nightmares and to her tormentor and love, the man he knows is whom he himself is standing in for.

Sometimes he wonders why she is choosing him to come to, why she is choosing him as replacement for the one she can never have – why not someone nameless that could be so easily provided in this city of depravity and false glittering lights. But most of the time he just works them both to exhaustion, and then lies silent and splayed out while she leaves him again.

* * *

"Dreams hurt me."

He looks up at her – she is straddling him and he is deep within her. She looks down upon him with hooded eyes, already halfway to wherever she goes during their fucking. It is unusual for her to say anything, and even though he suspects that she is not actually talking to _him _(oh no, not to him – but to the _other_) and even though they are mid-fuck he cannot help but to respond, and grunts out through clenched teeth. "Tell me how."

But she does not answer, she is already gone too far and rocks her hips and throws her neck back so that her white little breasts juts out and he forgets all about it until afterward when she closes the door behind her and he hears the motor to her car start.

* * *

They lie nestled and entwined, a mess of limbs and her fingers on his heartbeats. Were it not for the stark difference of their skin he might have difficulties telling them apart. It is so rare that she stays beyond what she deems necessary, and he forces himself not to clutch her too hard and refuse to let her go. It has been a while since he came to the realisation that he exists on breadcrumbs falling from her table, and it has been a while since he accepted that it will be all he can ever get, and he settles for that.

His lips rest on her brown hair, and looking down on her face he finds her utterly irresistible and frantic – the desperation something that rarely leaves her dark eyes these days.

She rolls on top of him and a smile that cannot possibly be real tugs at the corner of her mouth. He wonders what dreadfulness she saw tonight that was acute enough to send her to his bed, even though the thought is lazy; after all he shares horrors with her virtually every day and are as intimate with them as she is, though for some reason more resistant.

He lets his hands slide down her back and ass, and with her smile realises that she is drunk, that she must have stopped at a bar god knows where before she drove here. _On duty_. A sudden inability to breathe properly, and he knows that she now is so far gone that she no longer cares for the life she is living. Not when she's risking the job that used to mean all to her. For the first time (how many years has it been? he don't know) since the night she first came to his door he feels like crying. She is still looking down at him, suddenly seeming eager to defend her pain and her reasons, even though he's said nothing.

"He won't ever love me enough, will he?"

He would like to lie – after all, these days he could do almost anything for her. But he cannot quite go that far – truth might be the only honest thing she is prepared to accept from him.

"No."

She turns her back to him and curls up with her knees pressed into her chest. For an insane moment he fights the impulse to wrap himself so hard around her that he crushes her ribs; a combination of the urge to protect her and the urge to hurt her for hurting him.

She cries so silently. "I know that."

* * *

Finally he takes it no longer. He needs more, have to have more. By this point her eyes seem broken, and he wakes every morning with the physical sensation of being unable to breathe, even when she has not been there during the night.

"I love you."

It is what will forever push her away but she does not turn her back to him. Instead she looks into his eyes with what must be the very last remains of courage and her own self.

"I can't take that. You know it."

He throws the last vestiges of dignity and strength to the ground, even though the loss taste like bile.

"You throw yourself away on someone who is too weak be with you. You use me to forget all this shit happening in your life. You owe me!"

She hits him, as hard as she can and he tastes blood as rusting iron in his mouth. She is panting. Still he continues.

"Please... you can't do this to me. Can't do it to yourself. You need help... you're burning out, and you've used me for so long. We could be fine..."

He babbles and lies to both of them, and she is all too aware of it. "We were only ever about screwing – about forgetting. I never lied to you, never pretended it was different."

Pathetically he repeats himself. "I love you, Sara"

She screams now, hugs herself with her eyes squeezed shut. "Shut up! Shut the fuck up!"

He cannot stop. "You said it yourself – he doesn't love you enough to do anything about it. If you saw a counsellor or something, maybe things could work out, maybe..."

She turns away and walks out. "Nothing will work out, Warrick."

"You're pushing me away because you hate yourself," he says quietly to the door she left ajar. But he does not go after her. It is the last favour he can do her – stand back with his hands to his sides as she leaves Vegas. He knows Grissom will grant her the same grace.

His eyes burn dry and he goes back to bed.

End


End file.
